Ray Roettger: Our Health & Our Wealth Start in the Soil

Ray Roettger, an Indiana-based soil and crop consultant, will explain specific eco-farming practices that will help you grow healthy crops and healthy bottom lines year in and year out. (And he will tell you what not to do, too!) Ray has been around eco-farming for more than 30 years. He’s heard every new theory and he’s seen plenty of “magic bullets” misfire. He’s also learned from some of the eco-farming masters, and trained many of his contemporaries. Ray will share some incredible biological farming success stories, and tell you how to repeat them on your own operation: Luscious sweet corn grown with no added nitrogen; several dairy farmers reporting drastic improvements in herd health, production, and reproduction; organic corn out-yielding conventional corn; and hoophouse tomatoes raking in huge quality premiums with fertilizer costs lower than the packaging costs. As excited as Ray is about these success stories, he‘s even more excited about the future! Why? Because there are so many opportunities to make huge profits in eco-farming, even as conventional agriculture is mired in low commodity prices and high costs of production. And those opportunities start with creating a healthy soil that will grow healthy plants, livestock, and people. And Ray knows soil.

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Ray Roettger, an Indiana-based soil and crop consultant, will explain specific eco-farming practices that will help you grow healthy crops and healthy bottom lines year in and year out. (And he will tell you what not to do, too!) Ray has been around eco-farming for more than 30 years. He’s heard every new theory and he’s seen plenty of “magic bullets” misfire. He’s also learned from some of the eco-farming masters, and trained many of his contemporaries. Ray will share some incredible biological farming success stories, and tell you how to repeat them on your own operation: Luscious sweet corn grown with no added nitrogen; several dairy farmers reporting drastic improvements in herd health, production, and reproduction; organic corn out-yielding conventional corn; and hoophouse tomatoes raking in huge quality premiums with fertilizer costs lower than the packaging costs. As excited as Ray is about these success stories, he‘s even more excited about the future! Why? Because there are so many opportunities to make huge profits in eco-farming, even as conventional agriculture is mired in low commodity prices and high costs of production. And those opportunities start with creating a healthy soil that will grow healthy plants, livestock, and people. And Ray knows soil.

Ray Roettger is an Indiana-based consultant working with Agri-Energy Resources, serving commodity crop growers as well as diversified farms in his home state as well as Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, New York and Pennsylvania. He applies the principles of sound soil science to both organic and conventional farms. He comes to this role after a lifetime of studying and experience in eco-agriculture methodologies. In the 1980s he was key in moving Agri-Energy founder Dave Larson into the production of liquid fertilizers as required by Reams-method farmers. He has worked with the company in various capacities ever since. He and his wife, Kristi, are lifelong residents of Boonville, Indiana, and are active in their community and church.

Recorded at the 2014 Acres U.S.A. Conference, Columbus, Ohio, Saturday, December 6, 2014.

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About Acres U.S.A.

Acres U.S.A. is North America's oldest publisher on production-scale organic and sustainable farming. For more than four decades our mission has been to help farmers, ranchers and market gardeners grow food organically, sustainably, without harmful, toxic chemistry.